


Career change and other myths

by shai



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-04
Updated: 2019-08-04
Packaged: 2020-07-31 10:15:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,773
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20113462
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shai/pseuds/shai
Summary: Statement of Gerard Keay regarding a series of interventions to the outcomes of supernatural incidents.Or, alternatively: Gertrude Robinson conducts a job interview.





	Career change and other myths

He’s been tagging along with Gertrude for a couple weeks before they actually talk about what he’s doing there. They’d had had a common goal up until then – break into the Pitt Rivers museum, steal an ancient Norwegian text on the midnight sun before darkness-worshipping assholes after it can, get away clean – and while he’d been in it because the cultists had seemed like real jerks he could tell she had more of a long-term plan.

The only grand master plans Gerard had ever heard of anyone having vis-a-vis the supernatural were “steal its power for your own convenience” (which: hubris, will end badly) or “devote yourself to an uncaring inhuman master” (which: nah). 

So when Gertrude mentioned it was time to go back to the archives and do a little digging, he wanted an excuse to stick around and learn more.

He’d asked if she needed a hand, and she’d stopped walking and turned to look him in the eyes, chin tilted up.

In the time they’d spent together, it was rare to see her without a wry little curve to her mouth. It’s one of the things he likes about her, the way that even though she’s as driven and dangerous as his mother had been, she keeps sight of the absurdity of any given situation. Even backed into a corner by cultists with guns, she’s got a mean streak of humour that she keeps between her and fear. It’s an act, he’s pretty sure, but it’s a smart one.

Now, she looks at him unsmiling.

“Potentially, yes. But I’ve not lived this long by being trusting, so I’d want a full account of your motives for offering.”

He shrugs. “Well, shit, boss, I barely got a clue about those myself. I’m bored, I guess. Helping you hunt down a buncha dickheads who want to ruin the world seems like a good time.”

He would continue, but she holds up a hand.

“But you’re happy to share what reasons you do have?”

He shrugs. Sure. 

She asks… “What is your place in this struggle?”

“I mean, it’s not like I ever picked a place in it,” Gerard admits: “I’ve meddled, but not on purpose, really. It almost felt like the opposite – as if all the kinds of trouble that most of the world doesn’t even know enough to worry about were going out of their way to happen right where I could see ‘em.

“I went off to Genoa to look into an old bookshop and there’s some student-looking kid in the coffee shop next door dissolving away into the crowd. In Scunthorpe I took a walk one morning and a dog ran up to me and hassled me til I followed it. Took me over to an old woman walking determinedly out into the ocean, going on about how the sea is our cradle and how it was time for her to come home to it.

“One time I spent a week researching in the Bodleian and every single day there was a man in the bathroom staring into the mirror, looking more and more creeped out every time I saw him.

“It’s… I’m not really a nice person. I’m not comforting, I don’t know how to get along with people. I grew up hearing all about Leitner’s books and Smirke’s theory of the powers and I don’t remember what it’s like _not_ to know what’s out there. I asked if he was OK, that office worker in the bathroom, and he started crying and asking what his face looked like to me when I looked at the mirror, going on about how it was changed a little more every time he saw it, and... 

“There’s… there’s a nasty little piece of me that just found that fascinating. That always wants to sit back and watch the fish caught on a line struggling against it, that’s cataloguing the effects and victims neatly without a shred of empathy for the guy.

“I mean, I guess out of everyone you’ve gotta know what that’s like, huh?”

Her full attention is turned to him, calmly attentive. He blinks.

“Hey, wait, hang a minute, you’ve-”

“Indeed,” she says, unapologetic. “I'm taking what you said entirely at face value, young man: you're barely got a clue about your own motivations. As loathe as I am to use any powers of the Beholding, it's a useful way to verify your motives.”

“I… 

“Hrmph.

“Oh _fine_. Cool. I guess let’s add being mind controlled into explaining my fuckin’ psyche to the ongoing collection of Unsettling Bullshit In Gerard Keay's Life, why not.

“So, anyway, every time I got near enough to see something spooky going down, I ended up jumping in to help whatever sucker had got pulled into something bad. Partly because it’d piss off me mum no end for me to meddle just for the sake of helping someone, not because I was trying to gain something out of it. She'd be turning in her grave if she'd been buried. Partly… well I hadn’t ever had any normal ambitions, and it felt useful to snap someone out of a bad situation. And it was proving that part of myself wrong.

“So when rumours of something strange came up I’d end up checking it out sooner or later.

“Looking back, it’s odd how long it took before it got me into serious trouble. It was… 2010, maybe. Bicester. I was living in a squat and working in a music shop, and I’d been there for four months before I started hearing some _really_ nasty stories about our rival, an independent place on the other side of town.

“You’ve – one thing you’ve gotta remember, I’d tooled around finding and burning Leitner’s books, and I’d smashed up a couple artefacts, but all the other people I’d run into who knew about the whole situation were other nosy wannabe witches. Most of them knew less than me mum. They were folks on the hunt for real magic, real power – not the ones who’d already found it and had it look back at them.

“So I wandered into the shop pretty confident, no plan beyond browsing and eavesdropping. What I’d heard was the open mike night down at the Five Bells had gotten real bloody since they started renting gear from here instead of from my place, but that the girl at the counter over here just laughed when the barman came over with some questions.

“Looking back, the way he’d shuddered when he mentioned that laugh should have clued me in that something was up.

“As it was, I’d been skulking around looking for anything odd when this scrawny little teenager asked if she could help me. Emo half-fringe, dyed red. Knee-high socks and big clunky shoes, long fingernails painted bright red too. Skinny as a twig. There was a bit of an edge to her voice that I took at the time as nervousness. I hadn’t spotted her when I came in, and felt bad for lurking like such a shifty asshole and worrying this twitchy kid who was stuck here alone after dark. I brushed my hair back out of my face, thinking it’d might make me look a bit less dodgy.

“Turns out I was the one judging on appearances, not her – her hand snapped out and grabbed my wrist, and when she saw the tattoos there she laughed and got right up in my face to ask me in this chipper, snarky deliberately annoying-teen voice.

“‘Oh, so here’s someone coming into the shop with open eyes, huh? What can I do for you good sir?’

“‘… Just… browsing,’ I said. There was an odd sensation of movement on the back of my wrist and when I looked down I realised it was blood rolling down my skin where her nails had punctured holes.

“‘Are you really?’ She asked, voice full of malice. ‘Just an impartial observer, then? Not for long.’

“She was proper eerie to look at. It wasn’t that anything particular about her looked off – a photo of her would’ve just looked like a sixth former with an attitude and a Saturday job – but there was this energy to her that made me want to get out of there soon as possible. Even looking back on it now it's hard to put it in words. Not quite malice. Indifference, but the kind of indifference of a moving train to an injured bird on the track. I thought about saying I was after a new amp or something but I could tell that wouldn’t fly, so I tried to pull my hand free and she laughed and let it go, pulling a flute out of its case on the shelf behind her.

“We stood staring at one another for a second. She was about to raise the flute to her mouth, I was about to punch her in the face before she could.

“I reckon I'd've lost the exchange, but we'll never know. Before either of us could move, the bell in the shop door rang as another customer came in, and the cheerful little badly-synthetised chime made us both jump like scared cats. She laughed and shoved me away, hard, away from the goods.

“I legged it. Called in sick to work until I got the goods to come back and burn her shop to the ground. I skipped town before dawn, and I’ve been making enemies ever since.”

Gertrude nods, solemn: “Thank you.”

He… hadn’t thought of that shop for years. In a lot of ways it _was_ the start, though, wasn’t it? That was when he’d first realised it'd been naive to think of Leitner as the villain of the story, that there had to be dozens of people he'd never hear of asking the various entities for the power to make the world a worse place and getting it.

How did Gertrude's questions work? Had some deep-down part of him remembered that as a turning point, or could she demand truths within people that they would have never found without her asking?

He shakes his head like a dog trying to shake off water, as if it’ll clear his head.

She watches him, eyes cool and considering, and then she nods, just once.

“Well, if you want to come along, you’d be welcome.” And then she’s amused again: “Or if you want to run away from the heartless archivist, you’re well within your rights. But I’d enjoy working with you.”

He follows. He’s got no idea at all if he’ll enjoy working with her, but he’s pretty sure it won’t be boring.

**Author's Note:**

> I listened to all this podcast in a few weeks and I'm extremely charmed by its various good monsters and its weirdness and all the various hapless idiots.
> 
> The episode where book!Gerard explains all the powers particularly struck me as an amazing piece of storytelling craft - between amazing character moments for him + John, engaging worldbuilding/lore, and the situation framing their conversation being tense and interesting in itself (damaging the book the hunters think of as their tool!). So in tribute to that, here is me wondering how he and Gertrude ended up working together anyway.


End file.
